The Girl That Got Away

Orphan-raws is releasing its encode of Kakutou Bijin Wulong (Fighting Beauty Wulong), done from R2J DVDS. Therein lies a story: a project that never really got off the ground and is now officially over.

Fighting Beauty Wulong is one of those shows that was started and abandoned by multiple groups. LIME did nine episodes and gave up. m.3.3.w did five episodes and gave up. Getbackers did episodes 10-15 and gave up. The rest of the series is only available with HKDVD subtitles. Calling them dreadful is being generous.

Collectr's Law of Orphaned Anime states that when a show has been abandoned by multiple groups, it's probably for a good reason, and Fighting Beauty Wulong is no exception. It's sort of a ripoff of Yawara!, with mystic martial arts taking the place of judo. It has a beautiful and exceptionally talented girl protagonist, Mao Ren, the beauty of the title; her irate jii-san, Mao Hun, goading her on; and a befuddled newspaper reporter, Kabugari, who doesn't know if he wants the story or the girl more. Unlike Yawara, Ren embraces her fighting prowess and signs up to be part of an ongoing all-women martial arts competition, Prime Mat, which is produced by the Mao family's arch-rivals, the Cao family. Lots of mayhem, scanty outfits, and pantsu shots ensue.

Fighting Beauty Wulong was on my list of prospective orphaned series to finish from the get-go, but finding resources to do a long (and, truth be told, not outstanding) series seemed unlikely. Then, I caught a break. A BakaBT member said that he had professional scripts for the series, from an R1 licensor that had gone broke, and he'd be happy to share them. He sent them over, and we were in business. Except... they turned out to be dubbing scripts rather than subbing scripts.

This might not seem like the end of the world, but dubtitles (subtitles made from dub scripts) have serious issues. One is that they are typically incomplete. The licensor has control of the audio track, and if background lines can simply be omitted, they don't have to be dubbed. That doesn't work with the original audio track; unsubbed lines are pretty obvious. Another is that they are typically inaccurate. A dub script is made to fit mouth motions, not to translate the actual Japanese line. This became apparent in comparing the dub script against the fansubs, as checked by the team translators. The dub scripts weren't useless; they simply weren't enough for subtitling. Fighting Beauty Wulong would need a translation checker willing to do 25 episodes. None was available. The project ground to a halt with all episodes encoded, seven timed, a few edited and typeset, and all needing translation checking. After two years with no progress, it's time to throw in the towel.

M74 encoded the series. ninjacloud timed the episodes; I edited and typeset. In addition to the raws, Orphan is releasing its script archive "as is," in case any other team wants to pick up the project. Please note that the original scripts are Word documents in a strange format; getting them over to Aegisub is rather tricky.

Is it Mao Ren's fate never to have her words properly translated? I sincerely hope not. Meanwhile, you can get the raws from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net. The script archive is available as a direct download; see the torrent description for a link.

Orphan also has R2J DVDs for the sequel, Kakutou Bijin Wulong Rebirth (Fighting Beauty Wulong Rebirth), but they've never been encoded. What would be the point?